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This is an infidel book. It is about fear, not faith, and about aggression that comes with fear. It is about existential anxiety that brings us into society, within which we seek to expand our time-space by generating knowledge that is useful for the
practical conduct of life. Economically relevant knowledge is produced faster through division of labour. Distribution of such valuable output, however, poses a challenge. It sets each one against all others, in a vortex of conflict that climaxes in capitalism, where life is reduced to inventing ways of selfishly appropriatingsocially produced value. The primitive urge for day-to-day survival is transfigured into a quest for a particular type of knowledge, which provides its possessor control over humans through control over the product of their toil. The consumption activity constitutes a vital component of this act of expropriation, complementing and meshing inseparably with production and income distribution. This contest sets the context and content of self-interest and constitutes the rationalization of apitalism, developing into a modern type of slavery, where animalish aggression and violence are channelled into a sophisticated, culturally fabricated and institutionally fostered game of wits.